Lokutus - 1:59 am on Mar 6, 2009 (gmt 0)

I just finished an online meeting for a business group I belong to. We have at least 45 sites amongst us. So one guy, "Mr SEO Guru", comes up with the idea of exchanging links.

(I brought up the issue of incoming links from totally unrelated sites not having much value for SEO, but let's ignore that for now.)

Mr SEO Guru recommended that in order to avoid cross linking to each other, we can have a set up where we each get 30 incoming links in exchange for 15 outgoing links. This eliminates any two sites exchanging links.

I know that 9 of these sites have content very close to mine because I wrote the original copy and gave them permission to use it, albeit with a few changes. The other 35 sites I have no idea about. It's safe to assume that they are not peer sites as far as Google is concerned.

Is this plan a recipe for disaster or have things changed sufficiently in SEO over the past 3 years to make it viable?

PS Right now I'm sitting purty in the #1 slot on Google for the category in question so my motivation to collaborate is pretty miniscule.